She reached down to pick it up. Her hand, she noticed, was shaking. She perched on the arm of one of her library chairs; the seat itself was stacked with papers, the chair having long since ceased to be anything but part of her filing system. There were three paragraphs; two lengthy ones and a final, short one. She skimmed through the first two and then came to the third. It could not have been clearer.
“I much regret,” wrote Iain, “that I find no original insights in this paper. The arguments advanced by previous participants in the discussion are repeated, but not developed. And that part of the paper which purports to be a further refinement of the original conditions of the bystander’s plight do not add anything. Try as I might, I cannot think of any respect in which this paper helps a problem which already has a certain hoariness to it. Paper and ink are finite. I cannot recommend they be squandered on this article.”
She put down the report and closed her eyes briefly, as if to order her thoughts. Then she left her study and went back into the kitchen. The pasta was simmering on the stove, misting up the windows, but there was no sign of Jamie. Then she heard the piano, and smiled. They sometimes sang together, or he sang for her; now she heard him.
He stopped as she came into the morning room. He laid his hands gently on the keyboard, at rest, and smiled at her. She wanted to run to him, to hug him to her, this young man who had come to her so unexpectedly, who brought music, a child, beauty—all these things into her life. But she contained herself, and asked, “What was that again? It was so haunting.” It was.
“ ‘The Parting Glass,’ ” he said. “It’s one of those songs that has a complicated history. There are Irish versions and Scottish versions. Burns joined in and did a version too.”
“Of course. I’ve heard it before. Could I hear it again?”
“Here,” he said. “Take this glass of wine. And hold it. That’s how you should listen to it. Take a sip.”
She took the glass of white wine from him. It was still chilled, with tiny drops on the outside. She moved it in her hand, feeling the cool of it, the wetness.
Jamie said, “This song makes me feel sad.”
She watched him.
He began to sing, and the words, which he enunciated so carefully, and the slow movement of the melody, touched at her heart:
Oh, all the comrades that ere I hadAre sorry for my going awayAnd all the sweethearts that ere I hadWould wish me one more day to stayBut since it falls unto my lotThat I should rise and you should notI’ll gently rise and I’ll softly callGood night and joy be with you all.
He finished and gently closed the lid of the piano.
She did not move. “Why did you sing that?” she asked.
Jamie looked up. “Sometimes I just feel that way,” he said. “I feel sad when I’m happy. It’s strange, isn’t it?”
She thought of the words: But since it falls unto my lot / That I should rise and you should not—words of leave-taking, every bit as moving as those used by Burns in “Auld Lang Syne,” and with perhaps an even greater poignancy to them. Why, she wondered, did we need loss and parting to remind us of how much friendship, and indeed love, meant to us? Yet we did.
CHAPTER SIX
SHE DID NOT tell Jamie that she was going to see Marcus Moncrieff the next morning. It was true that he had accepted her involvement, but she suspected that his acceptance was a reluctant one and that he would not really want any further details. Perhaps he had come to the realisation that this is what she did: she became involved, and he had simply decided that he might as well let her get on with it. She wondered whether it was the same as accepting that one’s partner smoked, or drank rather too enthusiastically, or read frivolous novels; bad habits all, but ones with which one might just have to live. She found herself using the word partner against her will; it insinuated itself into her thoughts; linguistic resistance was difficult, and ultimately futile: there was no point in continuing to call Beijing by its long-established anglophone homonym when a whole generation had forgotten that it was once Peking.
She thought that it was a good sign that Jamie was becoming more tolerant of her involvement in the affairs of others; it showed, she thought, that he accepted her for what she was. Isabel had been perfectly self-assured in all areas of her life until that fateful night when she and Jamie had made the transition from friends to lovers. We can be confident in our dealings with the world when what the world sees is the outer person, with all the outer person’s defences: the intimacy of a love affair is a different matter altogether. And who might not feel just the slightest bit insecure under the gaze of a lover—a gaze which falls on birthmarks, on blemishes physical and psychological, on our imperfections and impatience, on our human vulnerability? And how more so when one is older and the lover is younger.
Jamie made everything different, and she was blessed by his presence. But by accepting him into her life she had given a hostage to fortune: he could become bored with her; he could leave her; he could suddenly find her ridiculous. None of which she thought would necessarily happen, but it could. So this sign that he approved of her was important. Yet I am not to think about this, she reminded herself.
Peter Stevenson, her friend whose advice she sought on all sorts of matters, had been explicit. “Isabel, you must stop fussing about this!” he had said, his voice revealing his irritation. “You and Jamie are together. The age gap is a little unusual. But so long as you are both happy, which you are, it doesn’t matter. And Charlie’s arrival has created a bond between you which will last for the rest of your lives. So stop fussing, for heaven’s sake.”
The three of them, Peter, his wife, Susie, and Isabel had been walking along the Water of Leith together, having had lunch in the Dean Gallery, when Isabel had said something about not wanting to crowd Jamie. The Stevensons had asked them to dinner at West Grange House and she had been hesitant in her acceptance.
“I’d love to come,” she said. “Yes, of course.”
“And Jamie too,” said Susie. “We meant both of you. Charlie will settle, won’t he?”
“I’ll bring Charlie,” she said. “I’m not sure about Jamie.”
“But you can choose the evening,” said Susie quickly. “We’ll fit in with you.”
Again Isabel had hesitated. “It’s not that,” she said. “It’s just that…”
Peter had looked at her quizzically. “Doesn’t Jamie want to come?”